When an individual is admitted as a patient into a hospital, certain information about the patient must be acquired and made available to various members of the hospital staff. Such information includes, for example, the patient's identity, address, age and occupation, next of kin, medical history, conditions for which treatment is sought, preexisting conditions, and any medical insurance information.
During a patient's stay in a hospital, written information relating to his medical history, doctors' and nurses' observations and remarks, laboratory reports, diagnoses, doctors' orders, prescriptions and other notes by the medical team, including doctors, nurses, technicians, orderlies and the like, become part of the patient's file. Patients with chronic conditions or who are frequently hospitalized may have numerous files of substantial size which contain important historic, as well as current, information. The information that is necessary to provide a complete picture of the patient includes, for example, the patient's vital signs, fluid balance, respiratory function, blood parameters, electrocardiograms, x-rays, CT scans, MRI data, laboratory test results, diagnoses, prognoses, evaluations, admission and discharge notes, and patient registration information. This information originates from a variety of sources, including the patient, doctors, nurses, monitors connected to the patient, testing laboratories, the patient's medical records, and hospital administration records.
A massive amount of information about the patient is therefore generated in a relatively short time. Increasingly, this information is automatically recorded or manually entered into a computer-based medical information system. Critical care environments, such as hospital intensive care units, trauma units, emergency rooms and the like, are filled with state-of the-art electronic equipment for monitoring of patients. Such systems include a plurality of patient monitoring devices that record information related to the patient's status. These systems may also capture information about the medical resources being consumed.
Furthermore, many hospitals have changed the way in which patients are billed for services. In the past, patients were typically billed on the basis of days hospitalized. With recent changes in health care management and practice, patients are now more likely to be billed on the basis of treatments received. Greater efficiency in the treatment of patients is therefore emphasized. As a consequence, hospitals now scrutinize the effect of a treatment on a patient more closely, with increased monitoring, observation and recordation of the patient's responses to treatment. The burden of entry of the increased amount of information that must be recorded about a patient has been reduced by increased automation.
Commonly owned U.S. Pat. No. 6,322,502 B1 entitled Medical Information System provides an example of a system for obtaining data and information from and about patients in a hospital, and making it immediately and selectively accessible to various members of the medical team in a hospital in accordance with the functions performed by those members. This information may be displayed, at least in part, on screen in a flowsheet. To date, systems and methods for the automated robust query of such data and information are not provided, but could be extremely useful. For example, the ability to search across a plurality of patients with respect to a given set of parameters would provide a useful analytical tool for clinicians and administrators. Searches based on hospital or clinical resources would also help analyze and improve efficient distribution and usage of such resources.